Infor Lawson Review

Infor Lawson HCM and Payroll Software Capabilities

Additional Infor Lawson software capabilities that are typically reviewed during the HCM and Payroll software selection process include the following:

Compensation Management

Yet another transplant from the system’s Talent Management Suite, Infor Lawson Compensation Management assists with incentive compensation goals—permitting companies to pay for performance and work to individual benchmarks and company objectives, as well as performance goals. Offering budgeting and analytical tools that help to forecast and measure the effectiveness of given compensation programs, companies can leverage this module to support variable, complex salary structures with flexible criteria. Of course, aside from the higher-level goals of forecasting this software also aids in the management of salary structures (and step-and-grade progressions) to ensure pay equity; the calculation of commensurate variable or incentive-based compensation; and the administration of sophisticated incentive compensation (e.g. pay-plan definitions, rules automation, eligibility determination, and automated-payout capabilities).

Human Resource Analytics

From personal dashboards to more advanced business intelligence, the Infor Lawson HR and Payroll software includes robust analytics capabilities. The HCM system offers over 100 packaged reports (published in XML, TXT, CSV or PDF) and a (Crystal) custom report writer that can be used repeatedly through the Lawson Job Scheduler Utility. Lawson also has the ability to satisfy novice analytics users with add-ins for Excel and step-by-step, wizard-driven report creation. Where the HCM system truly lets loose though is when a more advanced analytics approach is taken. Lawson's Business Performance Warehouse (BPW) can combine multiple data sources and build a multi-dimensional database for use with other analytical tools. The BPW uses extraction, transformation and load (ETL) via relatively simple point-and-click functionality (though advanced coding may be needed). In turn, this permits data to be stored in OLAPs (Online Analytical Processing) such as Hyperion Essbase or Microsoft’s (Analysis Services) data marts to be analyzed. A downside to Lawson’s approach is that few options exist outside of these capabilities. For an enterprise software vendor as big as Lawson (and now tapped into the even larger Infor parent), you would expect to see elements such as data mining or predictive modeling as part of the analytics portfolio. Unfortunately though, it would seem that these best-in-class features are only supported by HR systems such as Oracle, SAP and Workday.

Lawson Mobility

Infor Lawson offers some advanced mobile HR and Payroll functionality. For a company that seems to have lagged the competition for some time in the innovation realm, Lawson’s mobile apps (available as both native iOS and Android apps) offer a remarkably rich user experience that has clearly been designed by a business with a commitment to keeping pace with mobile trends. Aside from the form-factor fit that Lawson’s Mobile apps embody, their mobility scope is also something of an anomaly in this HR software market (and for this company). Specifically, with feature sets that cover a range of processes from recruitment (i.e. extending the Lawson Requisition Center to allow users to access and create job requisitions) to Customer Relationship Management (i.e. extending the Lawson Cloverleaf Global Monitor for company monitoring, analysis and response), the application’s capabilities are beyond many business software competitors who are simply delivering ubiquitous browser-based screens. Still, perhaps the most impressive (and consequently widely used) area that Lawson’s mobile prowess shines through is in its Mobile Employee application—an extension of the Employee/Manager Self-Service software which permits staff to view and manage their own personal information (online and asynchronously); tracks information on direct reports (and initiates personnel actions); and enables online collaboration to take place between managers and employees for competency maintenance, certifications, and keeping skill proficiency levels up to date.

Global Capabilities

As is the case with other areas of the Infor Lawson Human Resource Management suite, global capabilities are somewhat puzzling. To begin with, though the application is capable of supporting both multiple currencies and languages, those capabilities appear to be only accessible through the Global Human Resources software module—a system that is packaged as part of the Talent Management suite. For those companies already using a best-of-breed talent management software system then, adding an additional package from Lawson would be redundant. For those companies that benefit from new talent management software, the Global Human Resources module does have a set of impressive infrastructure elements that are geared toward supporting the challenges and complexities of international businesses. For example, both organizational and reporting structures can maintain multi-country differences. Plus, the fully-international employee record includes features for global employment contract management, integrated 3rd-party localization tools and comprehensive employee designation definitions.

Employee and Manager Self-Service

A standard across many HR and payroll software systems, Employee and Manager Self-Service software allows staff to review, modify and act upon relevant HR and payroll online. Lawson Employee and Manager Self-Service features the basic capabilities for staff, such as personal information access, benefits enrollment, career exploration, credentials management and payroll information viewing (including the ability to craft what-if statements based on variable total compensation factors). Managers have the added processes of on-demand access for direct report data, job requirement gap analysis capabilities, streamlined requisition and hiring process approval routing, time and attendance tracking and approval, competency updating, integration with analytics, training, performance, and compensation management modules (including the Lawson Compensation and Headcount/Turnover data marts), and the ability to initiate personnel actions in accordance with company-defined processes (through the Process Flow Integrator).